On Media

Roger Ailes blurbs for Rachel Maddow

By DYLAN BYERS

03/03/2012 07:58 PM EST

From the department of the unexpected: Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of the conservative Fox News Channel, has offered some very kind words to grace the back-cover of a new book by liberal MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow.

Maddow's new book, "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power," comes out on March 27, and features blurbs from high-profile journalists and Maddow Show guests such as Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll; social activist and author Naomi Klein; New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich; and "This American Life" host Ira Glass.

“Drift never makes the case that war might be necessary. America would be weakened dramatically if we had underreacted to 9/11. However, Rachel Maddow makes valid arguments that our country has been drifting towards questionable wars, draining our resources, without sufficient input and time. People who like Rachel will love the book. People who don’t will get angry, but aggressive debate is good for America. Drift is a book worth reading.”

--ROGER AILES, Chairman and CEO, FOX News

Tomorrow: Barack Obama blurbs for Jan Brewer (probably not).

UPDATE: Maddow writes in, via an MSNBC spokesperson:

I have professional contact with a lot of people in the media who don't share my political views. Mr. Ailes and I have politics that are basically exactly opposite, but that's all the more reason I was grateful he agreed to read "Drift" and to write that kind blurb for the dust jacket.

Some of the most important problems in the country are ones on which there isn't a harsh partisan divide -- I think the separation between the military and our civilian lives and politics is one of those problems. On a lot of issues, liberals and conservatives will always fight like rabid animals, but this is one where we can work together to fix it.

That's what the book is about, and I hope Mr. Ailes generously lending his perspective on it might catch the eye of some conservative readers and reviewers.